The Doctor turned away from the doors of the TARDIS; smiling at the image of Christina flying away in the super-charged double-decker bus. She was right; they were good together - but better to have one adventure and move on than to allow her to come along and lose her sometime in the future. With her recklessness, it might have been an unhappy parting sooner rather than later. Sometime quite soon, if those prophetic words were true, and he had no reason to doubt they were. Good thing he didn't have a Companion to worry about if something was going to happen.
He moved to the console and started the dematerialization sequence so the TARDIS would go into the Vortex and he could ponder the meaning of the prophecy. It certainly sounded like someone from his past was returning and their confrontation would result in his regeneration. *Drat, and I really like this body a lot* He ran his hand through his hair in frustration at the thought of changing yet again. *But maybe this time, I could be ginger?* They had just taken off when a buzzer sounded on the console. He moved over to the panel, and pulled the screen over. "An Alien Alert alarm for Earth? What'd you find, old girl?" Pressing a few keys, a series of symbols appeared on the monitor. Scanning them quickly, the Doctor frowned. "You found a Nodari probe on Earth? Well, the Nodari aren't ready for humans, and humans certainly aren't ready to deal with the Nodari. Lock on to those coordinates and let's stop it before it has a chance to send any interesting information back to their base ship." He pressed a few buttons, and the TARDIS landed. A quick scan of the location panel showed he was in the United States in early 2009, just a month or so after he had left London. Grabbing his coat, he headed for the doors, "Be back in a jiffy!" he called out to the TARDIS. The TARDIS hummed; everything was going according to plan.
The Doctor stepped out to find himself in the middle of a dense forest. The TARDIS had landed in a small clearing, and what appeared to be a hiking trail passed through it. He looked back and forth to the left and the right, trying to decide which trail he needed to take. Frowning, he pulled out his brainy specs and put them on to see if they made the choice any easier. He was just about to start "Eenie Meenie Miney Moe" to pick a direction, when a woman's scream came from down the right hand trail. He grinned, "A hint, much appreciated." and sprinted down the right hand path.
He only had to run for about half a minute to find the woman who had screamed. The trail had reached a small ravine, and a wooden foot bridge crossed over the river running through the ravine. Standing in the middle of the narrow bridge with her back to him was a woman in blue jeans and a red t-shirt, with shoulder length auburn hair. He was standing right behind her so he couldn't tell much about her, but he could see what she was staring at on the opposite end of the bridge quite clearly. It appeared to be a very large spider, at least 3 feet across, that was standing on the edge of the ravine, blocking the path. Its front two legs were waving in the air frantically. This was the Nodari probe the Doctor was looking for, and the waving legs meant it was scanning the woman standing in front of him. Moving slowly, he came up behind her while reaching for his sonic screwdriver. Putting the screwdriver in his right hand after changing the settings, he put his left hand on her right shoulder. She jumped, but didn't cry out, her attention totally focused on the spider in front of her. He had to speak loudly to be heard over the rushing water below the bridge. "On the count of three, I want you to step behind me, and then slowly keep backing up until you get back to the bank. Nod if you understand me." She nodded once. "Alright, allons-y. 1-2-3." On three, he stepped forward, holding out the sonic screwdriver and activating it. At the same time, the woman stepped backwards behind him. The spider-like probe reacted violently to the sonic waves he was sending its way. It moved back a few steps, then overbalanced and flipped onto its back, its eight legs folding in towards its body like when a normal spider dies.
The Doctor glanced back to make sure the woman was still moving backwards, which she was, with one hand covering most of her face and the other holding on to the railing of the bridge. The Doctor adjusted the settings on the sonic screwdriver and moved quickly towards the probe. Activating it again, he watched as a small circular opening in the stomach of the probe formed, and a metallic cylinder was ejected. Grinning he reached down, plucked it out, and then turned and started walking quickly across the bridge. When he reached the woman he said loudly, to be heard over the water, "Time to run..." and grabbed at the left hand she had been holding onto the bridge with and pulled her along behind him as he ran back towards the TARDIS. The sense of deja vu at telling a woman to "run" was almost overwhelming, but he needed to get her away before the probe self-destructed, and he needed to get the memory stick to the TARDIS for analysis to see if it had relayed any information about Earth back to the Nodari. The woman ran along with him, holding onto his hand tightly, not saying a word. *Probably still in shock. I'll make sure she gets back to her car before I leave.*
Just as the pair reached the clearing where the TARDIS sat waiting, there was the sound of an explosion behind them. They stopped and looked back, and a thin column of smoke rose out from the trees. The Doctor moved a couple of steps in front of her and looked back at her, finally taking a chance to look at the woman more closely. She was small, only coming up to his shoulders, and her face was pale with fright. She had the most interesting blue-gray eyes, which were wide staring at the column of smoke. She wore her own set of brainy specs, not quite as thick in the frames as his own, but each appeared to be a frame for each of her eyes. She was breathing heavily, and still clung to his hand like a lifeline. "The Nodari probe just self-destructed. I have its memory stick, so I can make sure there aren't any more like that running around and that it didn't send any information back to the Nodari. I'm called The Doctor by the way, and you are..." The woman finally turned her gaze to him, and the look of misery in her eyes caught his attention. He had expected to see shock or fear, but not misery. It was a look that reminded him far too much of himself when he got in one of his darker moods. "My name... my name is Jeanne, Jeanne McCormick. You're Doctor ...Who?" The woman's American accent reminded him a bit of Jack.
He grinned at the familiar question, "No, just Doctor. Why don't you come inside and rest while I check out this memory stick. Then I can take you back to your car if it's all clear. After a scare like that you probably want to head for home." He started to walk back to the TARDIS, still holding on to her hand. He put the memory stick in his pocket, clicked his fingers, and the TARDIS doors opened for them. Her softly spoken, "I don't have a home to go back to" didn't register with him as they entered the TARDIS. He let go of her hand and left her standing on the ramp, waiting for the normal reaction of running outside to look at the little blue box before coming back inside and commenting about "Did you know it's bigger on the inside than the outside?"
The moment Jeanne stepped into the TARDIS she was overcome with a feeling of warmth and affection that drowned out the constant misery she had been living in for the past two weeks. A soft, gentle, and quite obviously feminine voice seemed to speak directly into her mind, "Welcome Jeanne McCormick. I am the TARDIS, the Doctor's ship. I would like to speak with you, will you come inside and speak with me, please?" The voice sounded so nice, Jeanne nodded once and thought "Yes", and saw a set of doors on the opposite side of the room begin to open. The Doctor had his back to her, and didn't seem to notice as she slowly walked towards the opening doors. The feeling of warmth and affection seemed to grow stronger the closer she got, and it felt so good, so nice, she wanted more of it. When she reached the doors, she glanced back once, and then stepped through. "Follow me, Jeanne, and I will take you to a nice place where we can talk in private." Jeanne felt a pulling sensation taking her down the corridor, and whenever there was a fork or a T, the same pulling sensation told her which way to go.
Meanwhile, the Doctor headed straight for the console and began to explain to Jeanne, who he thought to be standing on the ramp behind him, "You see, my ship detected this Nodari probe. The Nodari are a race of great scientists, with a great love of learning about other species in the universe. Unfortunately, sometimes they can be a little over-zealous in their research. They also hate to waste time, so they send out a series of probes to various planets of potential interest. Each probe gathers information about the life forms found there and send it back to the base ship. The Nodari then figure out which planets appear to be the most interesting and come for a visit. I really don't think you humans are ready to deal with them, so it's just easier if they don't hear about you quite yet." He inserted the memory stick into a slot in the console and began to scan the contents. "Excellent, the probe just arrived today and you were the first person it encountered. I managed to remove the memory stick before any information could be relayed to the base ship, and this one was the only probe sent here, so Earth should be just fine for now." He grinned, happy to know his favorite planet was once again safe.
He then realized that Jeanne hadn't said anything yet. There had been no comment about the TARDIS being larger on the inside nor asking him any questions about what Nodari were or anything. He turned back towards the outer doors to find them closed, and no sign of Jeanne. For a moment, he thought she had just left, but as he turned back around, he could see that the interior doors were now open to the rest of the ship. He was sure that the doors were closed before. "Oh no no no no no no no" he muttered, and moved to another panel to scan the TARDIS for life signs. Sure enough - 1 Time Lord, 1 Human. Jeanne had somehow wandered into the depths of the ship. Shaking his head, he took off his outer coat and tossed it over the railing. "OK, help me find her quickly please so we can get her home and get moving," he spoke to the TARDIS as he began to head for the inner doors. A couple of minutes after he had passed through them, the inner doors closed and deadlocked behind him.. Then the rotor began to rise up and down as the TARDIS dematerialized herself.
Yes, everything was going exactly according to plan. The TARDIS settled herself into the Vortex, and went to go introduce herself properly to the woman she hoped would be her new Companion, and to keep her Doctor busy in the meantime. With his sonic screwdriver in his coat in the Control Room, he wouldn't be able to interfere until she was ready to let him in on what was going on.
To be continued